Steven Kent - The Clone Empire

“There’s a transport waiting for takeoff,” I told the men. “The man piloting that transport may be a Unified Authority assassin.”

If these men had been SEALs instead of MPs, I would have sent them in first. I’d seen SEALs at work; they could slip into a hangar, sneak onto a transport, and knock out the pilot more smoothly than most men could zip their pants.

MPs had a different calling. They arrested drunken sailors and escorted troublemakers to the brig. “I’m going in first. I want you to come in fifteen seconds after me. If there’s an enemy in there, I want to take him alive,” I said.

They answered with nods and sirs.

“Fifteen seconds, then you come in with your fingers off your triggers. I don’t want you shooting me in the back,” I said.

Months had passed since the last time I’d seen combat. During that time, I had not so much as fired a gun at a range; so as I entered the landing bay, it came as no surprise that I felt a nervous rush of adrenaline. I had not slipped into a combat reflex, but it wasn’t far off.

I stepped through the hatch, took three steps forward, and heard the familiar greeting.

“General Harris.” Sergeant Nobles waved and greeted me like an old friend. Then he remembered himself, stiffened, and gave me a proper salute.

“Nobles?” He fit the profile of the U.A. assassins—a clone in his twenties. He was neither heavy nor thin, neither muscular nor frail. Put him in any platoon, and he would blend in.

I had burst through the hatch and run toward the transport, then I slowed to the speed of a drill sergeant inspecting his platoon. A few seconds passed and the hatch opened again and six M27-carrying MPs charged in behind me and ground to a stop. I did not even need to look back to know they had confused expressions on their faces.

They had come in locked and loaded, expecting a fight. Instead, they got a dawdling general and an unarmed man standing at attention.

I ignored them and returned Nobles’s salute.

“Are we bringing an escort, sir?” he asked. The guy was so positive, so innocent. Six armed MPs had just stormed the transport, and it never occurred to him that he was under suspicion.

I said no and dismissed the MPs.

Thus began one of the more dismal missions of my career.

* * *

I did not expect Philo Hollingsworth to greet me with open arms, but I thought he would be interested in what I had to say. As things currently stood, he commanded a tiny base on a backwater world that was cut off from the rest of the universe.

No cars waited as we touched down on the airfield outside of Norristown. I wasn’t hoping for a ticker-tape parade, but I expected something. Nobles secured the transport, and we stood there wondering if perhaps we’d landed in the wrong place.

Two jeeps arrived fifteen minutes later. Colonel Hollingsworth did not come himself. Instead, he sent a couple of enlisted men to drive me. Glad for the chance to gather his gear, Nobles rode back to base in one of the jeeps. The driver of the second jeep took me to Norristown.

“Where exactly are we going?” I asked, as we drove past the road to Fort Sebastian.

“To the capitol building, sir,” the man said.

I did not know that Terraneau had a capitol building.

We drove almost all the way across Norristown. I had seen the city in ruins, now I saw it in reclamation, like a forest three years after a major fire. Collapsing structures had been torn down. Lots had been cleared. The locals had begun work on a scattering of small buildings, nothing too aggressive, just two- and three-story affairs. In another year, they might begin work on new skyscrapers.

Hollingsworth must have ignored my orders and alerted Doctorow that I was coming if we were headed to the capitol. I didn’t like it, but it could have been worse. Hollingsworth could have sent a firing squad out to shoot me when I stepped off the transport.

We drove into the prewar government sector.

For a moment, I thought we might end up outside the collapsed garage, with Doctorow telling me he had excavated the weapons; but the new fence we had built around the lot remained closed, and the ground looked undisturbed.

We stopped in front of a building with a polished onyx façade and working fountains. Its windows, once crusted with dust, now sparkled in the sun. A stream burbled down the tiered waterway that ran along the front of the building. The buildings in this part of town had not been destroyed, but they hadn’t been in use when I’d left. Someone had done a lot of work in a very little time on this structure. Taking in the amazing restoration around me, I hopped out of the jeep and entered Terraneau’s new “government center.”

The lobby of the building was a giant cavern paved in black marble and sparsely populated by men in expensive suits. The room could have held five hundred people. I saw no more than two hundred.

Hollingsworth met me at the door, his expression belying something deeper than anger. He saluted. I saluted.

“Did you really go through that broadcast zone?” he asked in a whisper, his eyes switching between me and the lobby. “It wasn’t just a trick?”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Did you find anyone on the other side?”

We were just inside the door. Across the floor, maybe one hundred feet away, Doctorow spotted us and started in our direction. Others noticed us as well, and the din dropped noticeably.

“I found Warshaw,” I said.

“He made it?”

“He’s got a growing empire with twenty-three planets,” I said in a soft voice. “Looks like the Unifieds want their planets back.”

Sarah Doctorow floated in her husband’s wake. She smiled in my direction, her lipstick the bright red color of oxygenated blood. Her face was as round as a full moon, and her body was tapered up like a pyramid. She moved through the gathering with the grace of a queen.

“I don’t believe it. You were right about everything,” he said in a voice that betrayed aggravation instead of admiration.

And then Doctorow was upon us. I had never seen him dressed like this before. He wore a freshly pressed dark suit. He’d trimmed his beard so that it no longer covered his neck. He had also cut his hair. It still hung past his ears, but gone were the dried-out tresses that had once brushed his shoulders.

“Welcome back,” Doctorow said as he approached us.

“General Harris, thank God you’re safe. It’s just a miracle,” Sarah said, sounding too enthusiastic to be sincere.

“It’s good to see you,” I told Sarah, my pleasure in seeing her every bit as genuine as her gratitude for my safe return.

Doctorow came up beside me. We traded handshakes and glances with about as much affection as boxers touching gloves before a fight.

The last time I had checked, Doctorow had been running Norristown out of his house, with his wife snooping over his shoulder. As for this building, I did not notice any cleaning crews in the government complex the last time I came by. Now it had a gleaming chandelier cascading from its ceiling, water fixtures decorating its lobby, acres of shining black marble, and air-conditioning.

“When did you move here?” I asked.

“This is our new capitol building,” Doctorow said, the friendly smile never leaving his face.

“For Norristown?” I asked.

“For all of Terraneau,” Hollingsworth said.

“Now you’re the governor of the planet,” I said. “Congratulations on your promotion.”

“We all have our ambitions, General,” Doctorow said in a booming voice. “You want to conquer Earth. My plans are not nearly so grand. I’ll settle for rebuilding Terraneau.”